The Way of Kings

by Brandon Sanderson

  “I assume so. Unless Elhokar has a fit for both of us missing his feast.”

  Sadeas snorted. “He’s going to have to grow accustomed to it. Six years of feasting every night is growing tedious. Besides, I doubt he’ll feel anything but elation after we win this day and leave the Parshendi down a full third of their soldiers. See you on the battlefield.”

  Dalinar nodded and Sadeas jumped off the rock formation, dropping down to the surface below and joining his officers. Dalinar lingered, looking over at the Tower. It was not only larger than most plateaus, it was rougher, covered with lumpish rock formations of hardened crem. The patterns were rolling and smooth, yet very uneven—like a field full of short walls covered by a blanket of snow.

  The southeastern tip of the plateau rose to a point overlooking the Plains. The two plateaus they’d use were on the middle of the west side; Sadeas would take the northern one and Dalinar would assault from one just below it, once Sadeas had cleared a landing for him.

  We need to push the Parshendi to the southeast, Dalinar thought, rubbing his chin, corner them there. Everything hinged on that. The chrysalis was up near the top, so the Parshendi were already situated in a good position for Dalinar and Sadeas to push them back against the cliff edge. The Parshendi would probably allow this, as it would give them the high ground.

  If a second Parshendi army came, it would be separated from the others. The Alethi could focus on the Parshendi trapped atop the Tower while holding a defensive formation against the new arrivals. It would work.

  He felt himself growing excited. He hopped down to a shorter outcropping, then walked down a few steplike clefts to reach the plateau floor, where his officers waited. He then rounded the rock formation, investigating Adolin’s progress. The young man stood in his Shardplate, directing the companies as they crossed Sadeas’s mobile bridges onto the southern staging plateau. In the near distance, Sadeas’s men were forming up for the assault.

  That group of armored bridgemen stood out, preparing at the front center of the formation of bridge crews. Why were they allowed armor? Why not the others as well? It looked like Parshendi carapace. Dalinar shook his head. The assault began, bridge crews running out ahead of Sadeas’s army, approaching the Tower first.

  “Where would you like to make our assault, Father?” Adolin asked, summoning his Shardblade and resting it on his pauldron, sharp side up.

  “There,” Dalinar said, pointing to a spot on their staging plateau. “Get the men ready.”

  Adolin nodded, shouting the orders.

  In the distance, bridgemen began to die. Heralds guide your paths, you poor men, Dalinar thought. As well as my own.

  Kaladin danced with the wind.

  Arrows streamed around him, passing close, nearly kissing him with their painted scragglebark fletching. He had to let them get close, had to make the Parshendi feel they were near to killing him.

  Despite four other bridgemen drawing their attention, despite the other men of Bridge Four behind armored with the skeletons of fallen Parshendi, most of the archers focused on Kaladin. He was a symbol. A living banner to destroy.

  Kaladin spun between arrows, slapping them away with his shield. A storm raged inside him, as if his blood had been sucked away and replaced with stormwinds. It made his fingertips tingle with energy. Ahead, the Parshendi sang their angry, chanting song. The song for one who blasphemed against their dead.

  Kaladin stayed at the front of the decoys, letting the arrows fall close. Daring them. Taunting them. Demanding they kill him until the arrows stopped falling and the wind stilled.

  Kaladin came to rest, breath held to contain the storm within. The Parshendi reluctantly fell back before Sadeas’s force. An enormous force, as far as plateau assaults went. Thousands of men and thirty-two bridges. Despite Kaladin’s distraction, five bridges had been dropped, the men carrying them slaughtered.

  None of the soldiers rushing across the chasm had made any specific eff ort to attack the archers firing on Kaladin, but the weight of numbers had forced them away. A few gave Kaladin loathing gazes, making an odd gesture by cupping a hand to the right ear and pointing at him before finally retreating.

  Kaladin released his breath, Stormlight pulsing away from him. He had to walk a very fine line, drawing in enough Stormlight to stay alive, but not so much that it was visible to the watching soldiers.

  The Tower rose ahead of him, a slab of stone that dipped toward the west. The chasm was so wide that he’d worried the men would drop the bridge into the chasm as they tried to place it. On the other side, Sadeas had arrayed his forces in a cupping shape, pushing the Parshendi back away, trying to give Dalinar an opening.

  Perhaps attacking this way served to protect Dalinar’s pristine image. He wouldn’t make bridgemen die. Not directly, at least. Never mind that he stood on the backs of the men who had fallen to get Sadeas across. Their corpses were his true bridge.

  “Kaladin!” a voice called from behind.

  Kaladin spun. One of his men was wounded. Storm it! he thought, dashing up to Bridge Four. There was enough Stormlight still pulsing in his veins to stave off exhaustion. He’d grown complacent. Six bridge runs without a casualty. He should have realized it couldn’t last. He pushed through the collected bridgemen to find Skar on the ground, holding his foot, red blood seeping between his fingers.

  “Arrow in the foot,” Skar said through gritted teeth. “In the storming foot! Who gets hit in the foot?”

  “Kaladin!” Moash’s voice said, urgent. The bridgemen split as Moash brought Teft in, an arrow sprouting from his shoulder between carapace breastplate and arm.

  “Storm it!” Kaladin said, helping Moash set Teft down. The older bridgeman looked dazed. The arrow had dug deep into the muscle. “Somebody get pressure on Skar’s foot and wrap it until I can look at it. Teft, can you hear me?”

  “I’m sorry, lad,” Teft mumbled, eyes glassy. “I’m…”

  “You’re all right,” Kaladin said, hurriedly taking some bandages from Lopen, then nodding grimly. Lopen would heat a knife for cauterizing. “Who else?”

  “Everyone else is accounted for,” Drehy said. “Teft was trying to hide his wound. He must have taken it when we were shoving the bridge across.”

  Kaladin pressed gauze against the wound, then gestured for Lopen to hurry with the heated knife. “I want our scouts watching. Make sure the Parshendi don’t try a stunt like they did a few weeks back! If they jump across that plateau to get at Bridge Four, we’re dead.”

  “Is all right,” Rock said, shading his eyes. “Sadeas is keeping his men in this area. No Parshendi will get through.”

  The knife came, and Kaladin held it hesitantly, a curl of smoke rising from its length. Teft had lost too much blood; there was no risking a sewing. But with the twist of the knife, Kaladin risked some bad scarring. That could leave the aging bridgeman with a stiff ness that would hurt his ability to wield a spear.

  Reluctantly, Kaladin pressed the knife into the wound, the flesh hissing and blood drying to black crisps. Painspren wiggled out of the ground, sinewy and orange. In a surgery, you could sew. But on the field, this was often the only way.

  “I’m sorry, Teft.” He shook his head as he continued to work.

  Men began to scream. Arrows hit wood and flesh, sounding like distant woodsmen swinging axes.

  Dalinar waited beside his men, watching Sadeas’s soldiers fight. He had better give us an opening, he thought. I’m starting to hunger for this plateau.

  Fortunately, Sadeas quickly gained his footing on the Tower and sent a flanking force over to carve out a section of land for Dalinar. They didn’t get entirely into place before Dalinar started moving.

  “One of you bridges, come with me!” he bellowed, barreling to the forefront. He was followed by one of the eight bridge teams Sadeas had lent him.

  Dalinar needed to get onto that plateau. The Parshendi had noticed what was happening and had begun to put pressure on the small company in green a
nd white that Sadeas had sent to defend his entry area. “Bridge crew, there!” Dalinar said, pointing.

  The bridgemen hustled into place, looking relieved that they wouldn’t be asked to place their bridge under fire of arrows. As soon as they got it into position, Dalinar charged across, the Cobalt Guard following. Just ahead, Sadeas’s men broke.

  Dalinar bellowed, closing his gauntleted hands around Oathbringer’s hilt as the sword formed from mist. He crashed into the surging Parshendi line with a wide, two-handed sweep that dropped four men. The Parshendi began to chant in their strange language, singing their war song. Dalinar kicked a corpse aside and began to attack in earnest, frantically defending the foothold Sadeas’s men had gained him. Within minutes, his soldiers surged around him.

  With the Cobalt Guard watching his back, Dalinar waded into the battle, breaking enemy ranks as only a Shardbearer could. He tore pockets through the Parshendi front lines, like a fish leaping from a stream, cutting back and forth, keeping his enemies disorganized. Corpses with burned eyes and slashed clothing made a trail behind him. More and more Alethi troops filled in the holes. Adolin crashed through a group of Parshendi nearby, his own squad of Cobalt Guardsmen a safe distance behind. He brought his whole army across—he needed to ascend quickly, pinning the Parshendi back so they couldn’t escape. Sadeas was to watch the northern and western edges of the Tower.

  The rhythm of the battle sang to Dalinar. The Parshendi chanting, the soldiers grunting and yelling, the Shardblade in his hands and the surging power of the Plate. The Thrill rose within him. Since the nausea didn’t strike him, he carefully let the Blackthorn free, and felt the joy of dominating a battlefield and the disappointment at lacking a worthy foe.

  Where were the Parshendi Shardbearers? He had seen that one in battle weeks ago. Why had he not reappeared? Would they commit so many men to the Tower without sending a Shardbearer?

  Something heavy hit his armor, banging off it, causing a small puff of Stormlight to escape between the joints along his upper arm. Dalinar cursed, raising an arm to protect his face while scanning the near distance. There, he thought, picking out a nearby rock formation where a group of Parshendi stood swinging enormous rock slings with two hands. The head-size stones crashed into Parshendi and Alethi alike, though Dalinar was obviously the target.

  He growled as another one hit, smashing against his forearm, sending a soft jolt through the Shardplate. The blow was strong enough to send a small array of cracks through his right vambrace.

  Dalinar growled and threw himself into a Plate-enhanced run. The Thrill surged more strongly through him, and he rammed his shoulder into a group of Parshendi, scattering them, then spun with his Blade and cut down those too slow to get out of his way. He dodged to the side as a hail of stones fell where he’d been standing, then leaped onto a low boulder. He took two steps and jumped for the ledge where the rock-throwers were standing.

  He grabbed its edge with one hand, holding his Blade with the other. The men atop the small ridge stumbled back, but Dalinar heaved himself up just high enough to swing. Oathbringer cut at their legs, and four men tumbled to the ground, feet dead. Dalinar dropped the Blade—it vanished—and used both hands to heave himself onto the ridge.

  He landed in a crouch, Plate clanking. Several of the remaining Parshendi tried to swing their slings, but Dalinar grabbed a pair of head-size stones from a pile—easily palming them in his gauntleted hands—and flung them at the Parshendi. The stones hit with enough force to toss the slingmen off the formation, crushing their chests.

  Dalinar smiled, then began throwing more stones. As the last Parshendi fell off the ledge, Dalinar spun, summoning Oathbringer and looking over the battlefield. A spear wall of blue and reflective steel struggled against black and red Parshendi. Dalinar’s men did well, pressing the Parshendi up to the southeast, where they would be trapped. Adolin led this eff ort, Shardplate gleaming.

  Breathing deeply from the Thrill now, Dalinar held his Shardblade up above his head, reflecting sunlight. Below, his men cheered, sending up calls that rose above the Parshendi war chant. Gloryspren sprouted around him.

  Stormfather, but it felt good to be winning again. He threw himself off the rock formation, for once not taking the slow and careful way down. He fell amid a group of Parshendi, crashing to the stones, blue Stormlight rising from his armor. He spun, slaying, remembering years spent fighting alongside Gavilar. Winning, conquering.

  He and Gavilar had created something during those years. A solidified, cohesive nation out of something fractured. Like master potters reconstructing a fine ceramic that had been dropped. With a roar, Dalinar cut through the line of Parshendi, to where the Cobalt Guard was fighting to catch up to him. “We press them!” he bellowed. “Pass the word! All companies up the side of the Tower!”

  Soldiers raised spears and runners went to deliver his orders. Dalinar spun and charged into the Parshendi, pushing himself—and his army— forward. To the north, Sadeas’s forces were stalled. Well, Dalinar’s force would do the work for him. If Dalinar could spear forward here, he could slice the Parshendi in half, then crush the northern side against Sadeas and the southern side against the cliff edge.

  His army surged forward behind him, and the Thrill bubbled within. It was power. Strength greater than Shardplate. Vitality greater than youth. Skill greater than a lifetime of practice. A fever of power. Parshendi after Parshendi fell before his Blade. He couldn’t cut their flesh, yet he sheared through their ranks. The momentum of their attacks often carried their corpses stumbling past him even as their eyes burned. The Parshendi started to break, running away or falling back. He grinned behind his near-translucent visor.

  This was life. This was control. Gavilar had been the leader, the momentum, and the essence of their conquest. But Dalinar had been the warrior. Their opponents had surrendered to Gavilar’s rule, but the Blackthorn—he was the man who had scattered them, the one who had dueled their leaders and slain their best Shardbearers.

  Dalinar screamed at the Parshendi, and their entire line bent, then shattered. The Alethi surged forward, cheering. Dalinar joined his men, charging at their forefront to run down the fleeing Parshendi warpairs as they fled to the north or south, trying to join larger groups who held there.

  He reached a pair. One turned to hold him off with a hammer, but Dalinar cut him down in passing, then grabbed the other Parshendi and threw him down with a twist of the arm. Grinning, Dalinar raised his Blade high over his head, looming over the soldier.

  The Parshendi rolled awkwardly, holding his arm, no doubt shattered as he was thrown down. He looked up at Dalinar, terrified, fearspren appearing around him.

  He was only a youth.

  Dalinar froze, Blade held above his head, muscles taut. Those eyes… that face… Parshendi might not be human, but their features—their expressions—were the same. Save for the marbled skin and the strange growths of carapace armor, this boy could have been a groom in Dalinar’s stable. What did he see above him? A faceless monster in impervious armor? What was this youth’s story? He would only have been a boy when Gavilar had been assassinated.

  Dalinar stumbled backward, the Thrill vanishing. One of the Cobalt Guardsmen passed by, casually ramming a sword into the Parshendi boy’s neck. Dalinar raised a hand, but it was over too quickly for him to stop. The soldier didn’t notice Dalinar’s gesture.

  Dalinar lowered his hand. His men were rushing around him, rolling over the fleeing Parshendi. The majority of the Parshendi still fought, resisting Sadeas on one side and Dalinar’s force on the other. The eastern plateau edge was just a short distance to Dalinar’s right—he had come up against the Parshendi force like a spear, slicing it through the center, splitting it off to the north and south.

  Around him lay the dead. Many of them had fallen face-down, taken in the back by spears or arrows from Dalinar’s forces. Some Parshendi were still alive, though dying. They hummed or whispered to themselves a strange, haunting song. The one the
y sang as they waited to die.

  Their whispered songs rose like the curses of spirits on Soul’s March. Dalinar had always found the death song the most beautiful of all he had heard from the Parshendi. It seemed to cut through the grunts, clangs, and screams of the nearby battle. As always, each Parshendi’s song was in perfect time with that of his fellows. It was as if they could all hear the same melody somewhere far away, singing along through sputtering, bloodied lips, with rasping breath.

  The Codes, Dalinar thought, turning toward his fighting men. Never ask of your men a sacrifice you wouldn’t make yourself. Never make them fight in conditions you would refuse to fight in yourself. Never ask a man to perform an act you wouldn’t soil your own hands doing.

  He felt sick. This wasn’t beautiful. This wasn’t glorious. This wasn’t strength, power, or life. This was revolting, repellent, and ghastly.

  But they killed Gavilar! he thought, searching for a way to overcome the sickness he suddenly felt.

  Unite them….

  Roshar had been united, once. Had that included the Parshendi?

  You don’t know if you can trust the visions or not, he told himself, his honor guard forming up behind him. They could be from the Nightwatcher or the Voidbringers. Or something else entirely.

  In that moment, the objections felt weak. What had the visions wanted him to do? Bring peace to Alethkar, unite his people, act with justice and honor. Could he not judge the visions based on those results?

  He raised his Shardblade to his shoulder, walking solemnly among the fallen toward the northern line, where the Parshendi were trapped between his men and Sadeas’s. His sickness grew stronger.

  What was happening to him?

  “Father!” Adolin’s shout was frantic.

  Dalinar turned toward his son, who was running to him. The young man’s Plate was sprayed with Parshendi blood, but as always his Blade gleamed.